This invention relates generally to electrically-operated dryers wherein air is blown over a heated filament to produce a hot air stream, and more particularly to a fixture serving as a storage holster for a portable hair dryer and also functioning as a rack for drying towels and other articles.
The modern portable hair dryer is a highly useful appliance, for it is light-weight and easily manipulated by the user, making it possible to direct a stream of heated air onto the hair. The standard dryer includes an electrically-energized resistance-wire filament housed within a casing that also incorporates a blower motor which forces air through the filament into a tubular nozzle projecting from the casing. The electric power cord for the dryer passes through a handle attached to the casing and terminates in a plug.
Since it is the usual practice to use a portable hair dryer after shampooing the hair, one ordinarily stores this dryer in a bathroom cabinet when not in use. Before using the dryer, it is necessary to plug it into an electrical wall outlet. This practice may be hazardous; for if the user, after taking a shower and while still wet then proceeds to remove the dryer from the cabinet where it is stored and to plug it in, should the user be careless, he may make physical contact with the prongs of the plug and receive a serious electrical shock, particularly if the bathroom floor is also wet.
This danger can be avoided by keeping the dryer always plugged in, with its operating switch turned off. But in that event, the dryer would have to be laid, when not in use, on a bathroom counter or shelf, and this may be inconvenient.
Since bathrooms must be provided with towels, and the atmosphere of this room, because of the use to which it is put, is often quite humid, it is sometimes the practice in a modern bathroom to install a towel dryer in the form of a hollow towel rack supplied with heated air to dry the towels supported thereby. But this is not the only need for a dryer in a modern bathroom, for in this age of wash and wear clothing, it is the common practice to wash out a single garment in the wash basin with a view to wearing this garment shortly thereafter. While drip-dry clothing will dry out at a fairly rapid rate, say, in 2 or 3 hours, if the bathroom is used for this purpose, its humid atmosphere may slow down the drying process.
However, the drying of towels and clothing can be accelerated by means of hollow racks for supporting the fabrics which operate in conjunction with an electrical heater and motor-driven blower to force air through holes in the racks. Dryers of this type are disclosed in the Jacobs Pat. Nos. 2,668,368 and 2,835,049 as well as in the Glowacki patent 3,626,602. But such dryers are relatively cumbersome and preempt valuable space in a bathroom. Moreover, in bathrooms typically found in an apartment dwelling where space is at a premium, there is little room for rack dryers of the type heretofore known.